The following is an excerpt from an election statement by Amanecer, a “political organization of people inspired by revolutionary popular movements and the idea of Especifismo.” Released just prior to the US elections in November 2008, Looking for Democracy ties together the relationship between elections and popular movements, the current economic crisis and the experience of colonized people in the U.S, and suggests a powerful trajectory for anti-authoritarian POC struggles in the coming years.

Looking for Democracy In All The Wrong Places
An Anarchist Perspective on the 2008 Elections

A Historic Blow Against White Supremacy?

We also can’t ignore that this is a historic election, because at this point, it seems as if we will see the election of the first black president in this country’s history. The long line of white faces in the White House will be injected with some color. For many people of color, this is a moment of joy, a moral victory and bitter pill for the racists to swallow. We share many of these feelings, but in a time when immigrants are treated as animals, caged, spat upon, and blocked with walls; in an era where a black man is still viewed as a criminal or a suspect, locked up in record numbers and thrown away; in an age where a woman of color is still assumed to be a prostitute, a maid, a lazy mother, or a servant, claims of a moral victory feel hollow.

We’ve had enough moral victories, we want a real victory over racism. It’s not simply a matter of changing laws or who’s in the White House. Since this country began it has stolen the land and labor of people of color. Today, it locks up hugely disproportionate numbers of black and brown people, terrorizes immigrants into silence, and continues to steal the resources of the indigenous. White working class folks are told by politicians that it is the brown immigrant that is responsible for their empty wallets and pile of bills, it is the black man outside their windows at night that is gunning for what little they have and must be jailed. Sadly, many buy into this scapegoating. To be white, to be a “real” American, is the only thing that separates them from rock bottom, and is their only protection from the arbitrary arrests and imprisonment that the rest of the population is subject to. Even now, McCain and Palin play to racism, raising suspicions of Obama as a “terrorist” or “radical”, playing on deeply held fears of black men as dangerous, accusations that wouldn’t have been given the time of day if Obama was white. The powerful play on racism to hide the fact that it is the debt collectors and bosses and police who are the real thieves and gangsters, the ones who white working class folks should be locking the door against and kicking out of their communities, We must end racism by uprooting it from the foundations, a white supremacy that doesn’t always necessarily wear a hood, but defends unearned benefits for most white people, and you don’t do that by changing who’s up top.

We also can’t ignore the fact that it very easily could have been Hilary Clinton where Obama is, on the way to the White House. This would have been portrayed as a great victory for women, and again we don’t dispute the joys of a moral victory, but we have to point out how hollow it would have been in the face of reality. We are being asked to believe that the rise of a white, rich woman to power would somehow have an effect on the lives of poverty-wage housekeepers, immigrant women working on assembly lines and poisoned by chemicals, or black women stigmatized as “welfare moms” even as they work day and night to feed their kids, as single moms of all colors do across the nation. As with racism, the roots of gender oppression lie at the foundations. As men buy into the disrespect of women, those who they should be sharing struggle with and not insults and violence, women, especially working-class women and women of color, continue to struggle to get by in a society that has always used them economically, politically, and sexually for its own ends. Those who don’t fit the gender norms are the target of hatred, and are demonized for who they love. The roots infest every area of society, in our relationships, in the workplace, and in our sexualities; we must burn out that which benefits men and heterosexuals at the expense of everyone else, and grow new ways of relating with each other. Again, this can’t be done by changing who’s on top.

On Our Own, But Not Alone

Over the last few weeks, members of our organization have been experiencing just how precarious capitalism is: we have gotten notices of “shift elimination”, and friends who just had and are about to have children were laid off due to the economic crisis. Some are still bouncing from temp job to temp job, while others are students facing heavy loans, and several of us are caught in the cycle of debt where credit cards and loans go to pay other credit cards and loans.

We know people who are in jail for property crimes, for self medicating, for having the wrong friends, for looking like “gang members”, or for lack of mental health care. We know that the police patrol our communities to make them safe, not for us, but for the landlords, homeowners, and business owners, who want fewer people of color, fewer youth, and fewer poor folks who will “hurt their property values” or “scare away their customers.” We know that prisons get the money that schools and public housing ought to get, which could house and nurture the young, the brown, and the poor.

None of us are sporting fancy cars or anything shiny and new. The economy has never worked for us or the people we love, but we have kept on working, hustling and making the best of things because we had to. We have borrowed money and asked for help from our families and friends when we can’t make rent or when we need health care. That doesn’t make us lazy or unworthy. It just means that we are not rich. We depend on each other and our families to survive, but we give to each other willingly because we know they would do the same for us. This kind of mutual aid may be stressful to rely on and to provide (especially when we or our families don’t have much to give) and it may look inadequate, but it is what working class people have always done to survive. Also, it holds the seeds of liberation, because mutual aid is what we do to survive in spite of the bosses and the government… and when we get good enough at it, we will do away with them both forever.

Via Amanecer: For A Popular Anarchism

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!